


Human Qualities

by musicforwolves



Category: World War Z - Max Brooks
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-18
Updated: 2011-12-18
Packaged: 2017-10-27 11:50:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/295536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musicforwolves/pseuds/musicforwolves
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A conversation with artist Harihar Mitra about his experiences during the uprising.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Human Qualities

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cm (mumblemutter)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mumblemutter/gifts).



> Thanks to morbane for the red-pen beta read, and 20thcenturyvole for the idea of stringing nets across Wellington Harbour. My html skills suck, so the layout isn't quite right.
> 
> The painting at the end is in fact real, and is currently hanging in Te Papa, New Zealand's national museum. Here it is: http://www.mccahon.co.nz/cm001620
> 
> Finally, thanks to the mumblemutter pair for requesting this. I borrowed the book off a friend, read it, and promptly never returned it, so taken was I by the plot. It's Yuletide, so I suppose it should give it back now. It was nice to get lost in the world of World War Z for a while.

Wellington, New Zealand.

 

  
**[From the open-air sculpture terrace on top of New Zealand’s national museum, the panorama of Wellington Harbor is laid out, with the uniform peaks of netting rising out of the waves. Harihar Mitra is applying the finishing touches to Line of Fire, his most recent sculpture. Patrons look through a chain-link fence into the gun barrels of a row of steel soldiers. It’s quite unsettling, and could be a comment on any number of prewar conflicts – were it not for the gleaming Lobo strapped to each soldier’s back. Harihar himself is an effervescent character, and it’s almost impossible to imagine him at the front line of any military maneuver.]**   


 

I found myself wondering more and more about the human qualities of the people we were shooting. Not during the war, of course – they specifically told us not to think of that. But after the war, once the numbers began to roll in, I began to consider those people who I’d killed. I would wake up from nightmares in which I was the one being fired at, in which I’d been revived. So many people I knew were in that position, anyway, during the first outbreaks in Delhi, so it seemed only natural to think of myself in that position. And, I suppose, to put the spectators in that position as well.

  
**[He gestures to the sculpture. The gun barrels point back at us.]**   


 

Needless to say, my work gets a lot of hatred flowing. There are a lot of suggestions that I’m somehow devaluing the life that was sacrificed during the war. I’m just trying to remind people that for a lot of the people involved, this wasn’t an alien enemy. Obviously, in some ways it was, but it was undeniably recognizable as us at the same time. In those early stages there was a lot of confusion, and the frequency with which we mistook a living being for one of the living dead was absolutely horrifying. It’s not too difficult to imagine being mistaken for one of those things, and I think that’s why my work has been so effective in starting this sort of discussion. It frightens people.

  
**Why would they have selected your work to mark the battlesite, if it is so frightening?**   


 

You haven’t seen it in person, have you? It’s frightening, but also triumphant. I haven’t heard any complaints about that one. I thought it was a fitting tribute to what went on there.

  


**[I shrug, and he smiles.]**  


 

Don’t worry – I haven’t been back myself. I suspect it would start my nightmares up again. No, I decided to get as far away from there as I could. Not just from the battles, but from the concept of the battles.

Despite what you may have heard, this country never had a large-scale outbreak. During the early warning signs, long before the major Asian infection, New Zealand decided to close its borders. For a long time, they only had to deal with small ‘events’, as they called them, in their typically understated way. The largest was in Auckland, but even that was under control before long. No, the only problem this country faced came later, when the living dead started walking out of the surf.

 

**Hence the nets?**  


 

That’s right. They had closed their borders as much as they thought was necessary. Turns out, not quite enough. It wasn’t much of a problem – they placed the nets around the coast, closed the country in, and that was pretty much it. You’d never be able to tell that anything happened. That’s why I stayed here – it’s easier to not be reminded of it all.

  
**How is it that this haunts you so much?**   


  


Are you kidding?

India was in the greatest state of disarray, as a country, that it had ever been in. A particularly hot summer was wreaking havoc with everything – disease was at an all-time high, with mosquitoes coming from the east, and in Delhi it was so oppressively hot that you could barely stand to go out in the sun before dusk. Then, just when we felt that the whole country was about to crack up, the living dead arrived.

The first few were seen in the fields outside Delhi. They were considered, at first, to be delirious from the heat, so they were taken into Kolmet Hospital. Mistake number one, taking them to a hospital in the first place – but taking them to the largest one? In the middle of an Indian summer, with thousands suffering from heatstroke? That’s about three more mistakes right there. Big mistakes. Reserve soldiers were called up within minutes of the fall of Kolmet. We barely had time to put our boots on. By the end of the afternoon, the number of the living dead was in the tens of thousands; by the next morning, it was quarter of a million.

  
**[Harihar rubs a hand across the back of his neck.]**   


 

It was the heat that did it, the panicked people falling dehydrated on the country roads to the north. That was the only way to escape, over the Ganges, but they were starting to descend upon us, crossing the Bay of Bengal, coming down through Kashmir… they were everywhere. 

I heard about all this later, of course, after Mahatma Gandhi Park. All we saw was the chaos in what I had always thought was the most secure city in the world. The stones looked like they’d been there forever. It wasn’t the stone that failed us, though. Our strength as people, as a community, is what did it.

Before long, the city had fractured. Many of those in power, including the mayor, had fled. General Raj-Singh was perhaps the only public figure left trying to restore order, if not to the city at large, then at least to his troops. He accompanied us through the streets to Ambedkar Stadium. The streets were full. The last time I had been to the stadium was for the finals of the Nehru Cup, when I was a kid. That time the streets had been filled with people, too. Now it wasn’t nearly as joyful.

  
**[He smiles, barely.]**   


 

I remember thinking, as we were being fenced in on the streets, the living dead in every building around us, crumpling like empty sacks whenever we managed to put one down, that there would have to be hundreds of civilians at the stadium for this rescue effort to be worth our time. I was a pretty insufferable kid, back then, I guess. I think that left me when we arrived and found them. No more than a dozen. No, wait, I think… eleven. Eleven people that needed rescuing. And we were going to be the ones that did it.

It actually went well for the first little while. We were at the top of the eastern grandstand, with the civilians against the wall, and we were facing outwards, felling them as they started to climb. Before long, though, the numbers were too great, swarming the pitch. If they hadn’t overwhelmed us, we’d have been trapped anyway, behind a wall of corpses of our own making, so I suppose it was just as well.

I think the general learned something at that moment. He’d been encouraging us this entire time; truly strong, and feeding his strength through to us, but we were shooting the ghouls down from a firing squad position, which meant the guys on the ends had to deal with thrice as many as the guys in the middle. They kept forcing us backwards, and we were suddenly pressed against the wall with the civilians behind us. When I turned around, I saw one of them tumble over the side. At least, I hope they fell.

The general saw that, too, and he ordered us to retreat. He was going to get us to save those civilians still behind us at any cost. We pushed our way down the grandstand in two rows, with the civilians between us. Even with the ghouls closing in on us, we made it out into the streets again, with the ten survivors hunched in the middle of our group.

The general’s radio was crackling, with a series of frantic voices on the other end, but I don’t know what exactly they were saying. I remember the general, though, calm and clear. “Don’t fret,” he said. “We’ll arrive.” He sounded like he was telling someone he was running late for dinner; that’s how unperturbed he was. I don’t know what was actually running through his head when he considered where to go. We were about a kilometer from the Ganges; we had to head away from there. There were three hospitals to our west. Perhaps he honestly thought north was the safest path, or maybe he though that the town hall would inspire some last burst of energy from us. Either way, he directed us. We were only too happy to have someone tell us what to do.

 

**[He gestures to the docks at the other end of the harbor. They are about a mile away.]**  


  


Think about walking that distance. Mahatma Gandhi Park is about three times as far, but that first third… there were five schools on that route. As we were hauling ourselves down the street, a fire engine from the Darya Ganj crashed into a cinema, sirens blaring, right into the box office. A firefighter dragged himself from the cab; we briefly considered getting to him but his leg was broken and the living dead had closed in before we could formulate a plan. Everything seemed to be tearing itself apart. I swore myself to keep focused, to concentrate. But on that corner…

The Red Fort was built in the 17   
  
th    
century. I had spent so much time there, sketching, and I knew we were passing close by. I don’t know whether I saw it out of the corner of my eye, or smelled the smoke first. Once I knew for sure what was happening, I started bawling. Uncontrollable, like a baby. The general put his hand on my shoulder, and for some reason, with all the mayhem surrounding me, and the urge to just lie down and surrender myself welling up in my gut, I was able to carry on.

It was tough going, though. Most of the rest of the way was narrow, and the living dead surrounded us like a sea, alternately surging forward and falling back. We were already conserving ammunition by this point, firing only when the hordes got too close, or a survivor stumbled out from a side street and we had to clear the space between them and us. We lost a few soldiers, a civilian or two from the stadium. One of the survivors we encountered had already been infected, and died amongst us. Suddenly, we were trying to expel him from our party before he reanimated. We almost succeeded.

 

  
**[For a moment, Harihar becomes very interested in dulling the edge of a soldier's Lobo.]**   


 

Everything that happened on that day – the stadium, the walk, the fire, the attacks – every single one of those things seemed like a step beyond what I was capable of. The circumstances were certainly something the general hadn’t encountered before, but he seemed in his element, somehow. I’d heard all these stories about his exploits, and you knew looking at him that every one of those stories was true. He didn’t carry it in his body, necessarily; he wasn’t a particularly imposing man. In his eyes, though, he had this kind of determination that he kept passing on to all of us, so even when things got bad, you were able to take a few more steps, then a few more after that. 

By the time we got to Mahatma Gandhi Park, there were maybe thirty of us, including eighteen soldiers, or so, and the general. That’s when things really started to shine.

Somewhere along the way, General Raj-Singh had come up with a defensive move for us. It was similar to what we’d done at the stadium, but in a way that we were able to keep up for a long time. Everyone working at the same pace. We formed this square around the few remaining survivors, our backs to each other, and were able to start taking them all down. There were about five of us who kept in the centre, covering fire whenever someone needed to reload or started getting a bit overwhelmed.

The first five minutes went spectacularly well, but someone realized that we were going to run out of ammunition before long. Of course, I later learned that this formation came from the colonial days, and it went about as well for them as it was going for us. Panic started to show on our faces, and it could have swept over the entire group, even the general. Instead he just raised his head and looked over the fray towards the river, and said ‘Hold your positions; keep the cover going.”

We did as he said, but inside my resolve was failing. I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was it; that I was going to die that afternoon. Was I just holding it together for the sake of morale? By that point, sure. I have my suspicions that all of us were. But we kept it up, at least if the sound of our gunfire was any indication. I noticed that fewer and fewer of the living dead were falling, although it sounded like we were keeping the fire consistent. Then I looked up, and saw what the noise actually was.

I don’t know whether the general knew from the start that we’d be airlifted out, or whether he was just operating on a tiny hope that we would, but the helicopters were here. At that point, most of us were out of ammunition, and as we started to help the civilians into the first helicopter, the living dead began to close in again. The general was at the rear, taking a few shots at any of the undead that got close enough to be a threat. Then the few remaining soldiers gauged the amount of space left in the helicopter, and we knew we could get all of us out.

  


**But the general...**

 

Yeah, Raj-Singh didn’t budge. He just stood there, counting his ammunition and firing at the ghouls. I couldn’t understand why he was so committed to staying put. He’d helped us through a lot and we really needed him in order to keep going. I saw one of my fellow soldiers tighten his hands around his rifle. If we didn’t reach an agreement before long, something ugly was going to happen: we’d have to leave without him, someone would attack him, the living dead would get close enough to take us all down.

I don’t exactly remember what I said to him, because of the circumstances. We were surrounded by the living dead, barely six feet away, and it was somewhat of a distraction. The general kept shooting, using gunfire like punctuation for his argument. I do remember him saying that he wanted to defend the country to the death. I think, deep down, he felt like he had already failed. I don’t really blame him. With everything falling apart, I felt like our battle was lost too. He was looking at the living dead and seeing people rather than corpses.

The general was out of ammunition by now, and knew it. He still half-heartedly aimed his rifle and pulled the trigger, with a series of disappointing clicks. He wasn’t going to get in that helicopter by himself. Without even thinking, I raised my rifle and bashed him in the face with the butt, just once, enough to make him stumble backwards towards the helicopter.

  
  
**[As he talks, Harihar finishes packing up his tools, and we start walking down through the gallery.]**   


 

Maybe I still was a bit of an entitled brat after all, doing that to him. General Raj-Singh got a swanky new eyepatch, which I felt bad about, but I was told that there wasn’t any permanent damage. Shame he didn’t survive long enough to find out.

As for me, I stayed on the front lines long enough to find out that India hadn’t totally been brought to its knees. I couldn’t make it to the end of the war – I was an artist, not a soldier; I would have been one of the first running away in Yonkers. The thing about assaulting your commanding officer is that you become known as a bit of a loose cannon. Even with the war going on, I think they were looking for an excuse to discharge me. I could have pretended to be angry, but I was the one that asked to be discharged. I decided to channel all that energy into my art instead.

You know what really bothers me about it all? That the second everything happened, our priorities as a planet shifted. Suddenly, art came second to everything else. Obviously, it’s to be expected, but I keep thinking that at least in wars even a hundred years ago, there were artists, and poets, keeping records in ways that we couldn’t easily forget.

 

**[We reach a painting by Colin McCahon. It consists of a black background, with a slogan hastily scrawled across it in white.]**  


 

This is what I mean. I can’t think of a better phrase to have had in mind during all that happened than ‘I AM SCARED. I STAND UP.’

  
  
  



End file.
